Rowing pair reported 300 miles from Hawaii

Angela Madsen, 52 year-old Long Beach resident, left, postponed her second attempt to row her twenty-foot rowboat, the “Spirit of Orlando," from Long Beach to Honolulu with New Zealand long-distance rower Tara Remington at the Pete Archer Rowing Center in Long Beach, where the two rowed around the channel for TV cameras. File photo. May 15, 2014. (Sean Hiller / Staff Photographer)

The first female rowing pair to ever row the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii were reported to be some 300 miles from their goal Thursday.

Paralympian and ex-Marine Angela Madsen of Long Beach and her rowing partner, Tara Remington, an American expatriate now based in New Zealand, are expected to reach Honolulu Saturday, said Lew Stowers of American Sports and Entertainment.

The pair left Long Beach on May 20 and have been averaging 60-70 miles per day for the past week in Madsen’s 19-foot monohull rowboat, “Spirit of Orlando.”

Madsen, 54, is a world record holder in the Paralympic shotput. She is paralyzed from the waist down. Remington, 44, a professional teaching fellow at the University of Auckland, moved to New Zealand 18 years ago. Both have records for rowing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

The California-Hawaii odyssey will serve to raise money for Charlotte Cleverley-Bisman, a New Zealander who lost her arms and legs to meningitis as a baby in 2004, the University of Auckland said in a statement Monday. Now 10, she needs ongoing assistance with prosthetic limbs as she grows, it said.

Remington’s row will also help raise enough money for Charlotte to attend Camp No Limits, a special camp for amputees and their families held in the United States each year. There are 10 Camp No Limits facilities around the country.

As for Madsen, her rowing effort is intended to raise money for wounded American war veterans, the statement said.